Cobb jail focuses on deportation
By MARY LOU PICKEL
Maria Rivera sits in the Cobb County Jail, facing deportation after a traffic stop.
If the Mableton mother of three, who is here illegally from Mexico, had been pulled over in any other county in Georgia, she likely would have bailed out and gone on with her life.
But Cobb County’s jail is at the forefront of local enforcement of immigration laws, going a step further than many states and further than a new Georgia law requires.
Cobb has trained some sheriff’s deputies to determine the legal status of all foreign born inmates at the jail, no matter how minor the charge. Cobb jailers now can start deportation proceedings under what’s known as a “287-G” agreement with federal immigration authorities.
“The computers are up and running,” Cobb County Chief Deputy Sheriff Lynda Coker said. “They can run inquiries on a federal database.”
A new state law effective July 1 requires jailers statewide to determine the legal status of inmates charged with felonies or DUI and report illegal immigrants to federal immigration officials, but they can leave it at that.In Cobb, jailers have been trained by federal immigration officials on how to inspect immigration documents.
“They can initiate the removal proceedings themselves,” said Richard Rocha, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement, known as ICE. “Any time we can share resources with local law enforcement, it’s a plus for public safety,” Rocha said.
Proceedings against 42
In the four weeks since the program began, Cobb jailers and ICE have interviewed 86 inmates, placed immigration holds on 68 and started deportation proceedings against 42, Coker said. Deportation paperwork done by sheriff’s deputies must be reviewed by an immigration officer before it goes to a judge.
Although it’s sheriff’s deputies, and not Cobb County Police Department officers, who are now processing deportation paperwork, the program is sending a shiver through the immigrant community.
Fear destroys any rapport the community had with police, said Jerry Gonzalez, head of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.
“This is having a very negative effect on overall public safety,” Gonzalez said.
Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University Law School, agrees. The institute is a nonprofit Washington think tank that studies global migration patterns.